Max Baer Vs Lennox Lewis

So a man who was stopped twice by a single punch, being knocked out in one instance, has a better chin than a man who had one of the best chins in heavyweight history?

That is absolutely preposterous!

 

People get really attached to the eras they grew up in.

 

Baer was the undisputed heavyweight champion, and one of the top four fighters of his era.

If that is not elite opposition, then there is no such thing as elite opposition!

 

Lewis was stopped twice by a perfectly placed punch delivered by big men. Baer was never hit with such shots.

 

You put it best: "one of the top four fighters of his era". He was elite by the standard of his era, not that of Lewis. Baer wouldn't even be a contender in the 90s.

 

Yes he was.

He got hit with everything except the kitchen sink during his career!

Don't waste your time playing the size card, Rahman was nothing exceptional as a puncher!

If size is the only qualification for being a puncher, then Primo Carnera was as big as anybody!

 

How could you possibly establish that to be the case?

Where would you even begin, if you had to prove it as a scientific argument for example?

 

It's almost impossible to prove, we'd need a time machine for that.
But based on video footage, it's as clear as daylight as far as I'm concerned. Baer was too crude/unskilled compared to Lewis, and also lacks the size.

 

It's not about being exceptional as a puncher, it's about the placement of the punch. Almost all top HWs can cause a lot of damage when they land flush. Do you think Cooper hit harder than Liston and Foreman ? Of course not, but yet he floored Ali and had him hurt bigtime. Why ? Cause he landed flush and the other 2 didn't.
Baer wouldn't have gotten up from Rahman's punch that he hit Lewis with.

 

Excellent.

You have just grasped the critical point of this!

Baer is a bit of an unusual case.

He had a crude style, that was successful against much more technically adept fighters.

Sometimes it failed spectacularly, but more often than not it worked.

You never, repeat never, pick somebody over Baer just because they were a better technician.

You think about the styles.

 

You must have a very high opinion of Baer's defense then!

If he fought with a much more aggressive style than Lewis, and was not getting hit flush by punches like that, then he must have had some sublime defensive qualities.

We must have had him all wrong over the years!

 

It can also be argued that he faced weaker opposition.
Also, was Ali's defense poor in his prime cause Cooper caught him ?!?? Of course not. But sometimes a lack of concentration can get you KO'd. That's all that happened in Lewis's case.

 

No, Lewis didn't have a better chin than Oliver McCall. But what's that got to do with this thread?

You're a strange little man.

 

I struggle to pick a handful of fighters that could have gotten up from that shot. I think even Vitali would have gone down.

 

The problem with this argument is this.

There are punchers in every era, that is one of the few givens.

Lewis's size and style made him less dependent upon his chin, than almost any heavyweight champion in history.

He offered more limited opportunities than his peers, and they were capitalized upon much more more successfully.

That leaves you with the weak defense, that he was stopped by big men.

If those two men had been say Tua and Ruddock, you might have a point.

The reality is that they were nothing special as punchers, and they exploited very limited opportunities!